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Comment by jnbiche | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why they're so quick to write off Long Bet #9. It's highly likely we'll reach 1,000,000 worldwide casualties from Covid-19 during a 6-month period before the end of year (defined in the bet's terms as "hospitalizations").

And if the hypothesis turns out to be true that it was an accidental release from one of Wuhan's 2 laboratories doing bat virus research, that's definitely a "bioerror" under the terms of the bet.

There's significant circumstantial evidence it could have been a lab accident(early Chinese reporting about the index case, 1 lab location a few blocks away from seafood market, bat species, earlier lab accident, etc), but nothing more at this point. But we may know more by the end of the year.

Edit: This is not the wild conspiracy theory about a bioengineered virus in a weapons lab. This is a hypothesis about accidental bat pee on a lab worker conducting routine research, or some similar accident (such accidental releases are confirmed to have happened twice with SARS-Cov-1 virus in a Beijing lab). Laboratory-acquired infections do happen, sometimes with deadly consequences. In my mind, it's the most feasible scenario at this point, given no one has provided proof that bats were even sold at the seafood market that was blamed. And we know that many officials were eager to cover this all up.

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the main thing about the accidental release theory to me is it neglects the intermediary animal aspect most scientists seem to agree on.

An accidental transmission from bats to humans in the lab: yes I could believe that. An accidental lab transmission from bats to pangolins to humans (currently thought likely) is much harder to believe. It doesn't follow the rule of simple explanations.

The lab-transmission theory is also dangerous because it's currently baseless in terms of hard evidence, yet is immensely satisfying for millions of people who are scared, bored, sick, pissed off, etc due to the virus. Like more traditional conspiracy theories, the lab transmission theory uses circumstantial evidence to provide a simple explanation in the face of chaos, the unknown, the void, the reality that the virus can really mess with us all this badly. "It's from a chinese lab accident" is not the pseudo explanation we all need right now, with so many different types of tension nearing breaking point.

Yes, it could be true, but I hope you'll join me in really hoping it isn't and in pushing back on it til we see proper hard evidence. Because I unironically think that if it turns out to be true it could cause a war.

Three points:

1. It is always going to be a little suspicious, at the very least, that the first COVID-19 outbreak happened in the same city as a virology institute. (Conversely, if we had a bizarre viral outbreak in Atlanta, I would have very similar suspicions.)

2. Nobody is going to start a war with China. On top of the centuries-old reasons that attacking China is stupid, they have nuclear weapons.

3. If it was released from a lab, it was almost certainly the result of an honest accident. SARS was very serious and China would have wanted to invest in research intended to prevent the kind of problems we are having now. If that research led to an accidental exposure and release of this virus, that would be a very cruel cosmic joke on us all, but it wouldn’t be a conspiracy for global domination or anything stupid like that.

I guess, but the last major hop from animal to human was the Hendra virus in Australia in 2017 -- going from fruit bat to horse to human [1]. This was in the Brisbane area which I'm sure has viral research labs nearby, but because they're Australia, nobody even began to speculate as much.

Sometimes shit happens, and it's deeply human to want to create the fantastical explanation. Not saying it couldn't happen it's just again, not the simplest explanation at all, and so it's really just not very likely.

2. Someone sure would start a trade war though.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170815095124.h...

It's really strange to me that you call this a "fantastical explanation" when there have already been 2 accidental lab releases resulting in human illness and death that were acknowledged by the Chinese government of a virus in the same family (SARS-CoV-1):

https://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_04_23/en/

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content...

From the WHO link, 4 people died, and they were tracking 300 contacts.

So a million times less severe.

Conspiracy Theorists will rant about the WHO being a China shill though, you can never win.

> Nobody is going to start a war with China.

Hopefully you are right, and I share your opinion (if that is what it is) that there will be no war in the immediate aftermath of covid-19. But I need to point out that the cited remark represents a kind of absolutist statements about the future that have had a chronic tendency to be wrong up through history.

There is definitely a risk for war with China as long as the US have a considerable number of weapons pointed against China, a war triggered either by intent or by mistake. The best way IMO to avoid the risk of war is to work towards total disarmament under the oversight of transparent and neutral international agencies. And discredit the warmongering on all sides.

Somehow and unfortunately I don't anticipate that such initiatives will be accepted by the world main powers, or by a frightened and easily manipulated public, any time soon.

Disarmament doesn’t prevent war. It only prevents winning. “Transparent and neutral international agencies” are a pipe dream.

Furthermore, remember what I actually said. The main reason there won’t be a war with China is because China is too dangerous to attack. When China was less well armed than they are today, they ended up at war much more frequently.

Why does the US “point weapons” at China? Same reason. We don’t want them to attack us or our allies, though our commitment to those allies has turned less credible in recent years. In both cases, the basic principle is the same: si vis pacem, para bellum. That is the only way to preserve peaceful coexistence between states that have fundamental differences and distrust between them. Which, after all, is the same basic reason different countries exist in the first place.

You make it sound simple, and simple is certainly compelling. It is however just a theory, and as it happens it's the same theory (to the extent that logic and theories has anything to do with such) that has lead to 2 devastating world wars. It's time to reconsider, and try a different theory, before the 3rd one wreaks havoc on us all. I have great faith in the prospect of brilliant minds finding solutions in the face of adversities like this race towards mutual destruction.

Unfortunately, many if not all of our brilliant minds are either tied up in how to convince people to buy stuff, or how to enable first-strike capability (enabling 'winning' in your theory). It doesn't bode well.

Hey, you left out brilliant minds moving virtual representations of stocks and futures around to shave off fractions of a cent millions of times a day.

sorry - my bad!

> as it happens it's the same theory (to the extent that logic and theories has anything to do with such) that has lead to 2 devastating world wars.

It appears that you are arguing that those starting the world wars did so because they were suicidal. On the contrary, it seems probable that they started those wars believing it was possible to win them.

No, you misunderstand in that case, sorry if I was unclear. I think people who "start" wars are an anomaly, the vast majority of wars are started as a consequence of a long chain of events, among which the notion of mutual deterrence and the accompanying need for an arms race is one of the most important. Outbreaks of world wars are the empirical proof of failures of that doctrine, and it has happened 2 times with devastating consequences.

Let's understand that mutual deterrence is not the way to prevent world wars already. Let's urgently try other options.

Quite the contrary. The road to the Second World War, at least in Europe, was paved with the good intentions of pacifism and appeasement, and the naïveté of assuming that someone like Hitler could be negotiated with. Britain and France could have chosen not to involve themselves in Hitler’s war (France even tried to make that choice once it started going poorly for them) but that would have done nothing to stop the war from happening. There was a fundamentally irreconcilable difference between Poland and Russia, who wanted to exist, and Germany, who wanted to forcibly depopulate Poland and western Russia and resettle that land with Germans.

You are correct, the interwar period is generally not considered an arms race, especially in the early period there were serious and to some extent successful attempts at arms reduction. But one is not correct to conflate pacifism with appeasement, the former a movement borne out of a sincere hope that the disaster that was WWI would never repeat itself, the latter a British policy that hoped to direct the German expansionism towards the USSR only ("no more territorial demands in Europe").

Among liberal democracies there was an anticipation that Germany would annihilate the USSR, and that Germany could be handled after that, a complete miscalculation. They could have thwarted the military buildup in Germany through other means than war, for example through boycotts like the US currently is so fond of. Or by granting the League of Nations better and sharper tools, but they chose not to. So there was an arms race, but it was mainly between Germany and the USSR, until the west realized that it was too late for Germany to be controlled.

As a side note, your theory that "Disarmament doesn’t prevent war. It only prevents winning." and “'Transparent and neutral international agencies' are a pipe dream." aligns well with fascist ideology. Not that you necessarily harbor such leanings. It just aligns, and is definitely very far removed from the ideas that underpin for example the United Nations, which could give you some pause.

> As a side note, your theory that "Disarmament doesn’t prevent war. It only prevents winning." and “'Transparent and neutral international agencies' are a pipe dream." aligns well with fascist ideology.

Not as much as your style of naive pacifism did, when theory was forced to turn into practice. Fascists are aggressors who will exploit any weakness to their advantage. They don't negotiate in good faith, they will cheat on any disarmament treaty they can, and international agencies are a joke to them. Understanding the world as it is rather than as we wish it might be means understanding that people like that exist.

Having extraordinarily powerful nuclear weapons as a deterrent is a primary reason most of Europe is enjoying the longest uninterrupted period of peace since maybe the Roman Empire. Failing that, "neutral international agencies" who actually had the power to keep the peace could only exist if those agencies, themselves, were an armed hegemon. People with guns always get their way against people without guns. And it just so happens that there is an armed hegemon that actually keeps troops deployed across most of Europe and has done so continuously throughout this long period of peace.

Yes, well. More fascistic talk, the Roman empire was a great inspiration to them too. Again, try and contrast these ideas with the principles on which the UN was founded.

You and your fellow arms race proponents will win, of course. Your prize will eventually be a smoking, poisoned world, billions of people dead or suffering irreparable damage, unspeakable pain (much like large swathes of the Vietnamese and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have endured), to a large extent uninhabitable where maybe, just maybe some tribe in the deep south will survive to tell the tale of the human folly that ruined the world for millions of years to come, a proud and conceited civilization who thought they knew it all. Congrats.

> Again, try and contrast these ideas with the principles on which the UN was founded.

The UN wasn’t founded by a bunch of pacifists. The pacifists surrendered and collaborate with the fascists. That’s your side. The people who founded the UN killed fascists and tried to build a new world order on the promise, “never again”. A promise that has been broken time and time again.

We’re living in the longest period of peace since before the Middle Ages. I’m not admiring the Roman Empire by pointing that out, I’m admiring the world that exists today. A world in which no one in living memory has had to die to re-litigate territorial claims over Alsace-Lorraine or the succession to the Austrian crown. Not only do you have no explanation for how this world works, you would tear down the structures that keep it peaceful in the name of pacifism.

Yeah, well you could have asked politely what I actually mean before loading the big cannons against a straw-man of my opinions through the course of this thread. I don't feel particularly obliged to expound at this point, but rest assured I'm no pacifist, particularly not towards fascist empire builders. It's just that I have several other goals too - the survival of the earth, and our species, civilization and cooperation among peoples etc. It's probably too complicated for you. Have a nice day.

> Yeah, well you could have asked politely what I actually mean

Says the guy who's been calling me a fascist.

2). If you include civil war and if you allow that civil war to be a war of factions within the CCP then you're wrong. There will be a new leader of the CCP, call him / her China's Gorbachev (and SARS2 is China's Chernobyl) and this will eventually lead, with assistance, to the de-Communization of China within at most 15 years but possibly just two.

update: possibly 6 months.

Is Xi in poor health?

Do you have any links on what you mentioned about the "rule of simple explanations"? It seems like a useful mental model.

> An accidental lab transmission from bats to pangolins to humans (currently thought likely) is much harder to believe.

The pangolin hypothesis has been proposed by one research group, as far as I can tell. A whole-genome comparison found that the pangolin and human coronaviruses share 90.3% of their DNA. Civets, the source of SARS virus (SARS-Cov-1) shared 99%+ of its DNA with human SARS.

So far, the closest match to the human coronavirus has been found in a bat in China’s Yunnan province, which is where the research bats at both the Institute of Virology and Wuhan Centers of Disease Control were from.

> The lab-transmission theory is also dangerous because it's currently baseless in terms of hard evidence

Hard evidence will be extremely hard to come by in a situation like this. But based on circumstantial evidence, it's a leading theory. There's a reason why multiple Western intelligence agencies are reported to be considering it (including many that dislike Trump).

> It doesn't follow the rule of simple explanations.

Not true. In fact, it's one of the most straight forward explanation so far. A Beijing lab studying SARS in animal models experience 2 fatal accidental spillover events in 2004, infecting multiple humans with SARS.

If it was caused by a wet market, why have Chinese authorities started allowing them to operate again? That seems really risky, no?

> Yes, it could be true, but I hope you'll join me in really hoping it isn't

I agree. I hope it isn't, but it's imperative to nail down what caused this. Civilization may well depend upon it. Covid-19 has been an amazingly benign illness compared to what it might have been. We have to figure out if it was a wet market. If it was, it's incredibly foolish to allow them to continue to operate. If it was an accidental lab release, the world community needs to pressure the Chinese authorities to better regulate their labs.

> "It's from a chinese lab accident" is not the pseudo explanation we all need right now,

It's far, far less of a "pseudo-explanation" than the bat soup, which was taken as gospel for a while.

> Because I unironically think that if it turns out to be true it could cause a war.

It's possible, but I'm very skeptical we'd go to war for a variety of reasons. First, this is an accident we're discussing about, of ordinary scientific research. Not a bioweapons program, or an intentional release. That's very significant, obviously. Second, but Trump wants to avoid getting into war at almost any cost. His isolationism is part of his appeal to his base, and the one thing that I believe would cause them to desert him once the body bags started piling up and the initial patriotic fervor wore off. He knows this.

I'm personally more concerned about another deadly pandemic coming out of China than I am about a major war. Emerging diseases like SARS, H7N9, and now Covid-19 have all come from China in the past 20 years. We really need to get a handle on this, ASAP.

"researchers from Hong Kong, China and Australia have found that genetic sequences of the novel coronavirus in pangolins are 85.5% to 92.4% identical to the coronavirus currently infecting hundreds of thousands people." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0

trade in pangolins just seems to offer the virus more attack vectors than accidental human exposure to... what? bat blood in a lab? direct exposure to the virus? it seems highly unlikely vs the possibility of someone catching it from a pangolin they were buying/selling/doing whatever people do with them. Were you talking about SARS or COVID19 with the 99% comment?

>If it was caused by a wet market, why have Chinese authorities started allowing them to operate again? That seems really risky, no?

No, because most wet markets are just normal markets that sell seafood, meat, veggies etc. They're pretty important community-wise.

finally I don't think trump, much less which intelligence agencies "dislike" him, has any place in this discussion.

> Were you talking about SARS or COVID19 with the 99% comment?

SARS and Civet coronaviruses. The closest match of any host or vector coronavirus to human Covid-19 has been a 96% match in _Rhinolophus affinis_ (a bat). That's also the major bat species that was used for live animal research in both Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan CDC, according to peer-reviewed research published in international scientific journals.

> No, because most wet markets are just normal markets that sell seafood, meat, veggies etc.

To be more specific, I mean wet markets dealing in exotic, non-domestic source of meat, ones that are scientifically known to pose a threat of spreading novel infectious organisms. You believe they should continue to operate as before?

> finally I don't think trump, much less which intelligence agencies "dislike" him, has any place in this discussion.

OK, then war doesn't have any place in this heretofore scientific discussion, either...

>SARS and Civet coronaviruses. The closest match of any host or vector coronavirus to human Covid-19 has been a 96% match in _Rhinolophus affinis_ (a bat). That's also the major bat species that was used for live animal research in both Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan CDC, according to peer-reviewed research published in international scientific journals.

I thought direct bat-to-human transmission was considered broadly unlikely (sorry for non-scholarly source):

"On February 7, 2020, we learned that a virus even closer to SARS-CoV-2 had been discovered in pangolin. With 99% of genomic concordance reported, this suggested a more likely reservoir than bats. However, a recent study under review shows that the genome of the coronavirus isolated from the Malaysian pangolin (Manis javanica) is less similar to SARS-Cov-2, with only 90% of genomic concordance. This would indicate that the virus isolated in the pangolin is not responsible for the COVID-19 epidemic currently raging.

However, the coronavirus isolated from pangolin is similar at 99% in a specific region of the S protein, which corresponds to the 74 amino acids involved in the ACE (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2) receptor binding domain, the one that allows the virus to enter human cells to infect them. By contrast, the virus RaTG13 isolated from bat R. affinis is highly divergent in this specific region (only 77 % of similarity). This means that the coronavirus isolated from pangolin is capable of entering human cells whereas the one isolated from bat R. affinis is not." https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analy...

To be clear, I'm taking this as suggesting that just having the bats in the lab in order to study the coronaviruses they carry isn't a likely vector of direct transmission to humans ("bat blood, bat pee" as your OP suggested). I'm also sticking with broad scientific opinion that says there was most likely another spillover animal.

>To be more specific, I mean wet markets dealing in exotic, non-domestic source of meat, ones that are scientifically known to pose a threat of spreading novel infectious organisms. You believe they should continue to operate as before?

I don't have time to look it up but I wouldn't be surprised to find that such trade is nominally illegal in china, hence the "bats aren't sold in this wet market" line. They are, but they aren't.

Since there are many definitions of "exotic sources of meat", "domestic sources of meat" I think people should be able to eat what they want as long as it isn't an endangered animal or one that presents broader risk e.g. virus spillover. And of course it would be better if we didn't pollute the environment with intensified domestic farming, which is what is happening where I am.

Regarding Trump/war I suppose you're right, it was just jarring. My war comment was wild speculation based on how the world might react to the irrefutable news that COVID19 was caused by a scientific accident.

But there are other possible causes of war than just Trump wanting or not wanting one.

In the meantime I'm going to stick with scientific opinion vs. unnamed sources, diplomatic cables that aren't released in their entirety, etc. Speculation.

I try to ask myself, do you want this to be true? Why?

I want it to be true that the virus jumped through animals to humans and wasn't the result of a lab accident because I see major global strife occurring if it were a lab accident.

Do you want it to be true that it was a lab accident? Why? Because it was definitive human error? Because China? (hope not :/ ) Because it's a simple and satisfying explanation, as I suggested earlier?

You misunderstand scientific consensus. One group has proposed the Pangolin connection. Several other groups believe that it was bats. Most are undecided. That's not consensus.

> iplomatic cables that aren't released in their entirety, etc. Speculation.

Seriously? You think the Washington Post is making this up? Lying about the cables? You think it's fake news? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...

I think we're done here. Personally, I'm interested in the truth here. That's it. I'm more driven by fear of another, worse pandemic than I am the fear of war. Whatever caused this, we need to address it as a global community, ASAP. In my personal estimation, the highest probability event is an accidental lab release. I don't "want" it to be true. In fact, I poo-pooed it like you until I sat down and looked at the various facts (eg, first cases weren't associated with Huanan market, initial Chinese media report mentioned lab connection, Wuhan CDC doing bat research 2 blocks from seafood market, and many more that you don't seem to want to hear about).

And to be clear, that may not be what happened. It could be a market connection, although I'm increasingly skeptical. Frankly, it could also be both (ie, a rogue employee sold bats to the market on the side, it's possible). But Occam's Razor is pretty clear here.

> I think people should be able to eat what they want as long as it isn't an endangered animal or one that presents broader risk e.g. virus spillover

That's all I want, even if it turns out to be the lab. These viruses can destroy us, if we're not careful. We have to take it seriously. Covid-19 is a warning. We have to take it seriously.

But I think we're done here. I want the truth, that's it. This is a big fucking deal, and it's important to know what happened so we can prevent it from happening again. I'm pretty shocked there are people in the West who don't share this sentiment, after everything we're going through.

Nah, I don't think it's made up; I read the same article. I think you'd agree there is a lot less data available there than there is in other avenues being pursued regarding possible origins.

I still don't think that a lab accident origin can survive occam's razor at this juncture. I don't see how a lab accident, where someone at the lab was infected and spread the virus unknowingly, is any simpler an explanation than someone who was around a lot of bats and possibly other animals picked it up that way. Certainly, in terms of "humans able to pick up the virus from one of these two ways" there are likely to be a lot more in the latter category than the former, right? As another reply to your OP pointed out, a previous instance of lab accident resulting in transmission was quickly identified and contained.

It is a big deal and I share your sentiment there. And you're just asking questions, I get it. Buuut... we disagree. take care.

edit: am upvoting your comments on this subthread as they actually got me to think a bit, which is supposed to be the point.

Do you think we'll ever conclusively know either way? If that is the truth, China will obviously continue to do everything it can to cover it up. And circumstantial evidence doesn't seem like enough.

I'm not taking a stance either way, I really am curious on whether we'll be able to come to a pretty firm conclusion on it.

I'm not sure. If this was a lab accident(big if), it's possible that a whistleblower could succeed in defecting. I'm guessing Western intelligence agencies also are hard at work at this issue, using assets and technologies we probably aren't aware of.

Regardless, it shouldn't be our primary focus at this time. But sooner rather than later, we need to determine exactly how this happened so we can avoid it in the future. If it was a wet market, then by God China needs to shut them down permanently (wet markets are opening back up now, which is another reason I suspect it was a lab). If it was an accidental lab release, we must demand much higher safety standards, and make sure that's enforced.

This pandemic could have been so much worse. Next time, it could destroy modern civilization.

It's not over by a long shot. Hard to say if "modern civilization" will ever be the same...

In what ways do you predict it changing?

If we can compare the virus from the lab from what actually broke out in the wild, I think we could come to some high probability conclusions, yeah.

This has been done. Spoiler: the virus is not from the lab.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-wo...

The problem is that all these articles rely on assumption that China is trustworthy, while it absolutely is not. I do not understand, why so many people immediately deny the whole possibility that the virus came out of the lab, as if was some heretic idea. I mean, a scientist has to be open-minded; taking into account the systemic unreliability of Chinese information, rigidity of their political system, recent orders to not publish information about the origins of the virus there is no way someone should rule out the possibility of accidental release. I saw in some other posts a point that if it was true a war is unavoidable, and therefore it is a "bad, dangerous" hypothesis and in needs to be suppressed. Well science does not work this way.

> I do not understand, why so many people immediately deny the whole possibility that the virus came out of the lab, as if was some heretic idea.

Take some solace in that sentiment is shifting to "it's possible". A month ago when I asked about it here, my comment was not only heavily downvoted, but there was no support in the replies and my comment was flagged. Now at least there seem to be enough people questioning it that the possibility is at least being taken seriously.

But wouldn't China actively work to prevent that from happening?

Possibly, but it could be leaked in a way to alternative sources to vet and verify.

All I'm saying is that I agree, Long Bet #9 should definitely not be dismissed. It's way too early.

Interestingly, if the Chinese reported numbers turn out to be even a little accurate, then I'm changing my mind from natural to lab accident.

I'd love to see some reasonable estimates on how bad the outbreak in China really was. How exactly does a country with no warning of what is about to happen get away with case numbers that aren't in the 10s of millions?

Such a reponse isn't impossible - maybe they were on high alert after SARS - but given what is happening in Europe and the States there are a lot of questions about what exactly happened/is happening in China and what the timeline was. It is difficult to organise against an unexpected exponential process in the time they claim they did.

Well my anecdotal observation was that the population themselves knew the drill.

The second they heard "SARS" they didn't need government permission to social distance or wear masks.

My in-laws stayed put and didn't see relatives over CNY. That is madness, imagine trying to cancel Christmas in Europe.

There were rule breakers and people who found lockdown difficult and in those instances the CCP tool kit was more adapted to crushing those types of responses:

Roads leaving Wuhan were literally dug up, the govt had a surveillance network already operational, and non Wuhan people were encouraged/happy to snitch on people who left Wuhan during the lockdown and its run up and get them sent back.

Meanwhile outside of Wuhan, everyone also knew the drill. Before there were even double digit case numbers (detected) in other places, everyone knew to stay in. In policy setting, I'm told a single man is effectively calling the shots wrt the epidemiological response: Zhong Nanshan who is accepted in Asia as being the granddaddy of SARS

This is markedly different from my observations of how it progressed in the "Western" world. It has been surreal to see Italy, France, Spain, UK, US and now possibly NZ + AUS follow similar progressions one by one after each other.

In the UK, most people have been waiting for authority to tell them what to do, but the government themselves are indecisive and keep trying to place their faith in "evidence based" science - common sense be damned. Having watched this all play out being right but late is almost useless and this debate over mask usage is ridiculous.

Meanwhile the NHS is covered in so much red tape that PPE and testing can't reach the frontline staff even when companies are trying to put them in their hands.

Even China ended up resorting to dressing medical staff in plastic bags and reusing single-use masks, from what I can tell - there are pictures out there and everything - and they had the advantage of being able to redirect a huge chunk of the world's supply of PPE into tackling an outbreak concentrated in a single city. The really substantial difference in China is that the press there isn't allowed to run article after article accusing the national government of trying to kill their medical staff, not that they're more competent. (Also, the official Chinese government line is that infections of medical staff happened due to exposure outside the workplace, and there's likely some truth to that from what other countries have seen.)

> Meanwhile the NHS is covered in so much red tape that PPE and testing can't reach the frontline staff even when companies are trying to put them in their hands.

I don't think it's NHS red tape so much as the government being bloody incompetent. They think they can rule by decree and have that shower down helpfully on the minions. Nope, you've got to get your hands dirty. I'm not impressed.

No I'm told the procurement staff of the NHS themselves are also very slow and very inflexible/unagile

> and now possibly NZ + AUS follow similar progressions

Where are you getting this from? All reports I have read show that NZ and Aus governments/people have acted quickly and effectively, and new infections are low in both countries.

CNY was Jan 25. The 1,000 bed wuhan hospitals that were built in 10 days started Jan 24. Lockdown was in effect weeks before.

> Lockdown was in effect weeks before.

Lockdown was in effect 2 days before, starting with January 23rd, not "weeks before". Some people in Wuhan knew about the virus weeks or even months before this (start of December), that is correct.

Yeah in and out of Wuhan. I came across the term "Wuhan Lung" a couple of weeks before CNY and it was affecting people as far away as in Thailand and a family friend caught it in Dubai around Jan 6th (and has since been tested for antibodies)

This line of reasoning makes no sense at all. You are saying the Chinese response was too good/swift compared to the West and it proves a conspiracy.

First issue with that is the Chinese response (lockdown) was not really swift at all. In fact, it was done about 2 months after patient 0, when there were hundreds of confirmed cases and filled hospitals. The impending outbreak was clear to experts including at least one from Hong Kong. If anything it was a rather slow reaction.

The worse responses from parts of Europe and US can't prove anything aside from their own incompetence. Other Asian countries were able to contain it with less time, information, warning or help.

Also, everyone knows the Chinese reported numbers are wildly inaccurate. Part of that is due to factors such as lack of testing capabilities. Add to that the various cover-ups throughout the process, especially at the beginning of the outbreak.

Regardless, it's clear how the containment was able to work. It was by locking down the entire city (blocking roads and all public transit, much more strict than anything practiced anywhere else) when a few hundred cases were identified.

Above all, all of that provides zero evidence for any origin theory of the virus. The lab theory was present right from the beginning, which seems unlikely since these viruses don't typically spread without an intermediate host. At the very least, proponent of this theory should be able to provide evidence that bats or viral samples from bats were present in the lab before the outbreak. If I'm not mistaken, this lab isn't really top secret since some American scientist apparently worked there, so at least some paper trails should be recoverable.

> At the very least, proponent of this theory should be able to provide evidence that bats or viral samples from bats were present in the lab before the outbreak

This is described for both labs that were doing bat research in published, peer-reviewed research in international scientific journals, by the researchers themselves from Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan Centers for Disease Control. Sometimes in great detail. There's a lot of evidence out there.

But I agree China's total response and/or numbers aren't really suggestive of either hypothesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x_pIgvDLcg

Is that so clear? This Dr. Peter Daszak, described as a coronavirus expert who apparently worked with the lab, said (4:50~) "There was no viral isolate in the lab, there was no cultured virus (..) anything related to SARS-COV2 so it's just not possible."

Your assertion was, "At the very least, proponent of this theory should be able to provide evidence that bats or viral samples from bats were present in the lab before the outbreak".

Yes, it's clear they were working with live bats of the species that most scientists, even those who believe in the pangolin hypothesis, believe is the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2. Multiple papers published from BOTH Wuhan labs describe such bat research. The Wuhan CDC did so much live animal research that they employed collections expert by the name of Tian Jun-Hua, whose work collecting bats is described in a number of pre-pandemic media reports (including several times he quarantined himself after being exposed to gross amounts of bad urine or blood). You can see him doing his work, including live bat collections, in this (government produced) documentary about the Wuhan CDC: https://youtu.be/ovnUyTRMERI

But to your question, here's a paper from the Wuhan CDC lab published in a well-known international journal that I happened to have open:

Guo WP, Lin XD, Wang W, et al. "Phylogeny and Origins of Hantaviruses Harbored by Bats, Insectivores, and Rodents" PLoS pathogens

Before you stop reading and respond, "those are hantaviruses they were studying. Covid-19 is a coronavirus.", let me stop you. My hypothesis, like others who believe this is a possibility, has never been that they were studying SARS-CoV-2 specifically, but rather that the lab, or a lab-adjacent facility, was where the virus accidentally "spilled over" from bats to humans. That said, they were studying bat coronaviruses in both labs.

Also, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing live bat research. See the many articles about the Institute's "bat lady", Shi Zheng Li, and her research.

Especially as the outbreak was happening during the New Year.

See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 which concludes that it was a naturally evolved virus based on DNA sequencing.

Yes, and that would be entirely consistent with the scenario discussed in my comment. Did you read it? You seem to be responding to some other comment about an engineered virus, which no one here is even discussing.

I get the feeling people just skim a few words, and then respond based on their...feelings? intuition? politics?

While the analyses above suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may bind human ACE2 with high affinity, computational analyses predict that the interaction is not ideal7 and that the RBD sequence is different from those shown in SARS-CoV to be optimal for receptor binding. Thus, the high-affinity binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to human ACE2 is most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that permits another optimal binding solution to arise. This is strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is not the product of purposeful manipulation.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 concludes that since maybe (because computational analysis) it isn't as efficient for the receptor binding it wasn't purposefully manipulated. Maybe making the most efficient virus was not the goal, maybe there were many trials and many attempts to get a virus with certain qualities and this one was a failure that got mishandled.

---

Anyway, collecting viruses is had work, as shown in this video from December 10, 2019 by the Shanghai Media Group (SMG, one of China's largest state-owned media): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovnUyTRMERI

The road is bumpy but we must learn to stick to our initial choice when we feel confused and lost. In the past 10 years we have visited every corner of Hubei Province. We explored dozens of undeveloped caves and studied more than 300 types of virus vectors. But I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life. Because humans need not only the vaccines but also the protection from their nature.

I guess different people have different definition for "significant circumstantial evidence". We have two hypotheses: 1. virus come from seafood market, 2. virus come from lab. Let's see the likelihood for each with each piece of data.

Data 1: Index case. There is no evidence that the "index case" is ever found. The earliest patient backtracked to Nov 2019 [1], but there is no report that patient is related to the lab / market.

Data 2: close lab location to seafood market. This alone does not favor one hypothesis to other, since distance is communicative. The virus can start from either location to the other.

Data 3: Bat species. Not sure what aspect of the bat species is related, but one thing to note is the virus sample found in bat is only 96% similar to the virus sample. At 30k genome and an mutation rate of 1bp per two weeks, these samples have at least 20 years worth of evolution time. Unlikely to relate to either lab / seafood market. Some researchers believe there might be intermediate hosts, but there doesn't seem to be evidence what that intermediate host might be.

Data 4. Earlier lab accident. I think the lab accident data is actually not favoring the lab hypothesis. If you think in a Bayesian way, earlier lab leaks are quickly identified and controlled. Given that this time it is not, your belief for lab leak should decrease a bit. Anyway, for the lab data what's important is the likelihood of (the lab, without genetic engineering, get a hold of this virus, and leaked) vs. (an intermediate host). Having worked in Biohazard level 2/3 labs, I think a leak from level 4 lab will be more unlikely compared to intermediate host, but we don't have any good estimate of the two likelihood yet.

So I think people can have strong beliefs about where the virus come from (since everyone's prior is different), but from the data the likelihood really doesn't strongly favor any of the two hypotheses.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro...

> but from the data the likelihood really doesn't strongly favor any of the two hypotheses.

I mostly agree with this. I personally think the totality of the evidence favors the lab hypothesis, for a variety of reasons (note the the other lab conducting and publishing about live bat research in Wuhan - the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control - was BL2, I agree it's unlikely to be the BL4 Institute of Virology).

But I also agree there's also a decent probability it was the market. I'd say 3:1, if I had to put a number to it.

However, folks on the other side seem to want to categorically rule out an accidental lab release, seemingly for some social or political reason. That seems very wrong-headed.

Edit: btw, regarding your point 4, a Bayesian approach would seem to provide more support for the accidental lab release, given the posterior. That's actually the approach I'm using here, I even meant to mention it in one of my comments. That said, I hadn't thought of your interpretation. I'll think about that, but I think that what may be different here is that one of the labs in question here isn't under national control, unlike the previous ones that have had accidental releases. And we all know the problems provincial governments have had with corruption and coverup. But I'll think about what you said.

> Given that this time it is not, your belief for lab leak should decrease a bit.

China's ambitions and role in the World are very different in 2020 than they were in 2004. If China manages to contain this pandemic better than the US and Europe, it'll come out relatively stronger.

We do not have hard evidence about the lab leak hypothesis and we must have it before drawing any conclusions. The timing of the economic repercussions on the US/EU seems to come at a strategically perfect time for China to gain politically. This would be a much better alternative to a way and much easier to cover up. All relevant evidence may have been wiped away, for all we know.

All I am saying is that there are definitely reasons to have different Bayesian priors in 2020 compared to 2004. Evidence is still weak, I agree.

Ok, “evidence” aside. Let’s talk about biological weapons. The ideal scenario for a weapon would be very different from an ideal evolutionarily for a virus.

Something like Ebola is a great weapon. It is incredibly fatal, and targeted. It takes out the targeted population and burns itself out quickly. It’s contained and destructive.

However something like a Coronavirus spreads too easily. It’s hard to keep from striking back at home. It’s also not deadly enough to be useful militarily. It targets the old and sick (as we’ve observed).

I’m tired of this conspiracy theory. It assumes people who are smart enough to engineer viruses aren’t smart enough to understand weapons. It’s just another Frankenstein tale. The dumb can be appalled by the intellectuals and sleep at night knowing they are righteous.

I'm assuming you didn't bother reading my comment. No one here is discussing biological weapons except for you. I'm talking about a lab accident in a normal lab involving bat pee or bat blood. There were two accidental releases in a Beijing lab involving SARS-Cov-1 in 2004 (admitted by Chinese authorities), resulting in accidental human infections and death.

And it's unclear if that was at case here. It may well turn out not to have involved an lab. But it's also very much up in the air right now.

Next time, try reading before going off on a self-righteous rant.

> resulting in accidental human infections and death.

4 deaths. It was not an outbreak.

https://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_04_23/en/

Also related to bet #9, it doesn’t really come to term by the end of 2020, but rather 6 months into 2021, as an event on December 31st of 2020, has 6 month to accumulate casualties within the terms of the bet.

> Not sure why they're so quick to write off Long Bet #9.

Note that this was written on Feb 24, before the West realized how bad this could be.

I mean the most likely explanation is that it came from the market, no?

* Most of the first cases had a direct tie to the market

* it happened before with SARS-1

* Why would they cover it up by blaming it on the markets? They had already come under scrutiny for reopening them after what happened with SARS-1. A lab accident is maybe the Chinese government doing a bad job, a dirty market that should never have reopened in the first place is definitely the Chinese government being inept.

I just don’t see it.

The cases which caused doctors to suspect an outbreak of SARS-like disease had a tie to the wet market, but it turned out those weren't actually the first cases. Also, the fact that SARS was caused by a wet market means that Chinese doctors are going to be a lot more suspicious of SARS-like symptoms in workers at one than they are in general. Basically, the evidence suggests that the apparent ties to the wet market might be an illusion created by the fact that the health system was looking more closely for disease outbreaks there.

Something similar happened in Italy. The case which tipped them off to the fact that they had a major outbreak was someone that was only tested because they'd had contact with a person who'd travelled to China recently, but the general consensus is that was a red herring and the outbreak there originated in Germany.

> * Most of the first cases had a direct tie to the market

False. Few of the initial cases had any tie to the market. Multiple outlets have reported this from the beginning, even before the lab theory started circulating here in the US:

"However, a study, by Chinese researchers published in the Lancet medical journal, claimed the first person to be diagnosed with Covid-19, was on 1 December 2019 (a lot of earlier) and that person had "no contact" with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. [...] She also said that three other people developed symptoms in the following days – two of whom had no exposure to Huanan either." [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200221-coronavirus-the-...]

> * it happened before with SARS-1

You know what else happened before with SARS-1?

https://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_04_23/en/

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/02/content...

and then, recently:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...

> * Why would they cover it up by blaming it on the markets?

Who knows? They certainly have a record of covering up such stuff. It may have been released by a lab (the Wuhan CDC, who was conducting live bat research on bat coronaviruses with 96% match SARS-Cov-2) that is under control of the provincial authorities, the same ones who we know tried to cover up the initial outbreak. Possibly, Xi Jingping and/or national leadership felt it would just be too much to reveal to the world that not only was there a cover-up, but it was a cover-up of a lab accident under the direct control of the provincial government. After they had been warned by multiple countries about safety issues involving coronavirus research in the nearby BL4 lab.

I agree it's possible that the spillover somehow was linked to the market. That said, the spillover likely involved a person who was in close contact with lots of live bats. At this point, it seems most likely this would have occurred at one of the labs studying bat coronaviruses. But it's far from proven.

Also, to add a possible answer to the final question above, on why would they cover it up?

Well, if the Hubei provincial government covered the whole accidental release up, and if the Xi Jinping wasn't aware of it, I think he would probably want to keep that under wraps since it would make him look weak if it were to be revealed he wasn't even aware of the situation on the ground for multiple weeks.

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